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Editorial: Emler may be breath of fresh air for KCC

The newest member of the Kansas Corporation Commission may be just what the regulatory agency needs right now, a man who takes his work seriously but doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Gov. Sam Brownback appointed Jay Emler to the KCC seat vacated by former chairman Mark Sievers, who submitted his resignation in December and said he planned to return to private life. KCC member Shari Feist Albrect has been named chairwoman and Emler, a Republican who resigned his seat in the Kansas Senate to move over to the corporation commission, was sworn in on Friday to make the three-member commission whole again. Tom Wright is the third commissioner.

Sievers’ departure, Albrect’s elevation and the appointment of Emler, coupled with the earlier departure of former KCC executive director Patti Petersen-Klein, completes a shake-up of an agency that has found itself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons in recent years.

Emler, whom Kansas Court of Appeals Judges Karen Arnold-Burger described as a brilliant but humble gentleman with a great sense of humor who conducts himself as a professional, sounds like he will be a good fit for an agency that had too many appointed officials who, although they were doing serious work, took themselves way too seriously.

Petersen-Klein went into the executive director’s job with the belief she was there to clean out an overstaffed agency burdened with employees who were lazy and incapable of performing unless relentlessly driven by their superiors. A consultant’s report on the agency showed Petersen-Klein had wasted no time losing the hearts and minds, to say nothing of the trust, of the people she was to lead.

Sievers did not like the fact he and the commission had to deal with the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, a state agency charged with representing consumers in utility rate cases, and thought many cases could, and should, be handled without public hearings.

The Kansas Corporation Commission overall showed an alarming disregard for the Kansas Open Meetings Act and at one point was ready to adopt an “open meetings” policy designed specifically to avoid public scrutiny at every opportunity.

Emler has the right professional background for his new job — he worked in the telecommunications industry before he began practicing law and has served on the Senate’s utilities committee. He also has the right personal attributes for public service — a qualified professional who is humble and has a sense of humor.

Emler could prove to be the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time.